Let’s start a discussion on how to Market your Chiropractic practice effectively in 2023. This article is an introduction—a survey course—if you will, of proven strategies, tactics, and best practices that can help you take the promotion of your Chiropractic practice to new heights.
This article is more than a list of tactics to Get New Patients. I will be presenting a systematic approach to help you put your Chiropractic marketing on autopilot.
Let’s start by reviewing the role of Marketing and Promotions in the overall operations of Chiropractic practices. Clearly, this is an important aspect of the business of running a Chiropractic practice and a major aspect of my approach to Chiropractic Coaching.
Contents
For the purpose of this article, I’ll use the terms ‘marketing’ and ‘promotions’ interchangeably when discussing this topic.
Design Your Operations for Sustained Success
To review, below is the big-picture model that we use in ADIO Chiropractic Coaching to define, describe, and develop the Systems, Procedures, and Operations of high-performing Chiropractic practices.
The Four Domains of Chiropractic Practice Operations
We discussed this framework in detail in the article below:
The Pillars of Sustained Success in Chiropractic Practice, Part 3
I won’t go into very much detail on all of the Domains above, as today’s article is focused on the Marketing and Promotions Domain.
A quick word of caution though, while Marketing is very important to the success of your Chiropractic practice, this Domain alone will not guarantee that your practice will grow and prosper to the level that you want it to. It’s crucial that you also develop competency in the Conversion, Retention, and Team Leadership Domains of your practice operations.
In fact, I feel that too many practice management gurus over-emphasize “getting new patients” and do not mentor their clients enough on becoming well-rounded, fully functional leaders in all aspects of their professional lives.
Yes, your promotions are very important, but do not become too dependent on this area solely to sustain your practice at its current level. In fact, the best way to build a great practice is to have strong Conversion outcomes and then, most critically, to be an expert in leading your patients through your Retention process. The Retention Domain should be a major focus—the foundation—of your practice operations.
Building a Retention-driven practice will eliminate the need to constantly generate “replacients” to replace the patients you lose. This is the surest pathway to having a strong, thriving practice that will stand the test of time. Retention training is fundamental within the ADIO Chiropractic Coaching system.
My point is that Marketing is an important part of your practice operations, but do not exclude the other Domains as you work to develop a well-rounded, sustainable Chiropractic practice. Marketing is but one piece of the puzzle.
The Inner Game of Chiropractic Marketing
As with most areas of life, successfully marketing your practice begins with internal clarity and certainty. Success always starts from within. As you engage in promoting your practice, your mindset, attitude, and your beliefs will provide the motive force for your effort to help more and more people through your practice.
Your Mindset, Attitude, and Beliefs
Your mindset, attitude, and beliefs breathe life into your broad marketing strategy and shape the tactical applications that you will be implementing as you develop your Marketing Domain.
Below are a series of assertions that I believe encapsulate a powerful approach to Marketing and Promoting Chiropractic practices. Try these beliefs on and see how they fit.
- Marketing your practice is not about you. If you are committed to helping as many people as possible through your practice and making a profound impact in your community, then promoting your practice is essential.
- Promoting your Chiropractic practice is a service to your community. It is an act of kindness. It is part of your effort to save lives through your practice.
- People are suffering in your community. They need Chiropractic. The best thing that could ever happen to someone in your community is to become an active patient in your practice. Build a robust and professional approach to marketing your practice, and give them the opportunity to experience transformational Chiropractic care.
- Marketing your practice is central to fulfilling your Purpose. Being on Purpose means regularly introducing new people to your practice. Your efforts need to be aligned with your Core Identity.
- Embrace the ideal of: always be promoting your practice (ABP). Adopt a proactive and forward-leaning posture when marketing your practice. Have this perspective not because you only want to grow your business. You are on a mission to help as many people as possible—to save lives through your practice. Marketing your practice is about communicating and introducing new people to a service they need.
- Your Team is your greatest asset. Promoting your practice should be a regular part of your day-to-day procedures. Your procedures are your promotions. Invest your time, effort, and energy in training your team to be effective in this area.
Let’s move from the theoretical to the practical and introduce the first thing you must do to establish a high-performing Marketing Domain.
Chiropractic Marketing Basics: Your Overarching Outcome
The first step in building out your Marketing Domain is to define your Overarching Outcome of this Domain. I touched upon this concept in this article. Please have a look at it, if it is new to you.
What does the term Overarching Outcome mean?
Your Overarching Outcome is the one result or outcome you are trying to accomplish within a given Domain. It is very important to explicitly define this and to make sure that all of your team members understand this distinction. This idea is foundational.
Your Overarching Outcome answers the questions:
“Why does this Domain exist?”
“What is the purpose of this Domain?”
Spend a moment and think about the question below:
What Are Your Marketing in Your Practice?
Are you promoting:
- Adjustments as individual events?
- Chiropractic care in general?
- Pain relief?
- Improved health, performance, and vitality?
- Improved function?
- The benefits of Chiropractic Care?
- Any other specific outcome?
When determining your Overarching Outcome, it is important to narrow your focus and look at fundamentals. The list above represents outcomes patients often experience with Chiropractic care. What is the first thing that potential patients need to do in order to benefit from Chiropractic care? What is the first step in this process?
I highly recommend that you specifically market this first step:
Market and Promote your Spinal Checkup appointment.
The Overarching Outcome of your Chiropractic Marketing and Promotional Domain should be to generate Spinal Checkup appointments.
You may use different terminology for this first visit appointment in your practice. I recommend that you adopt the terminology of Spinal Checkup in your public-facing communications, and refer to these appointments as Day Ones in your internal communications.
I’m not saying you should ignore the outcomes above in your marketing communications. Definitely use them. But the purpose of emphasizing those great outcomes is to motivate people to schedule for a Spinal Checkup in your practice. They need to come into your office to have their spines checked in order to determine if and/ or how they can benefit from Chiropractic care. Have laser-like focus on the Spinal Checkup appointment.
What is the Purpose of the Spinal Checkup?
It’s important to communicate that Spinal Checkup appointments are evaluations. The purpose of these appointments is to determine if Chiropractic is right for the potential patients that come in. You need to clinically assess the patients before you can understand how to approach their individual cases. You need to determine the parameters of their possible problems in order to determine the best way to potentially recommend care to them.
The Spinal Checkup is the first step of them getting the help they need and experiencing the benefits they want.
It may be appropriate to promote your Spinal Checkups as the possible first step towards pain relief (if this messaging is aligned with your Principles, Beliefs, and Values), improved health and vitality, or some other positive outcome. But make it clear that the Spinal Checkup is a no-obligation opportunity to see if Chiropractic (implicitly, your practice) is right for them.
Your Marketing Domain exists to flood Spinal Checkup appointments (Day Ones) into your practice. It’s all about the first visit. This needs to be your Overarching Outcome.
Construct Your Chiropractic Marketing System
Now that you have your ‘marketing mind right’ and you have defined your Overarching Outcome, let’s continue the process of building this Domain. The next thing we need to do is to construct your Marketing System.
Your Marketing System should be the main driver of your Marketing Domain. Your Marketing System is made up of individual marketing channels that work together to regularly generate the requisite number of Day Ones so your practice will gain traction, grow, and achieve your Strategic Vision of success.
Building an effective Marketing System as part of your overall practice operations will take the stress and guesswork out of “getting new patients,” allowing you to focus on taking care of your patients and leading your team.
We’ll discuss specific examples of marketing channels in detail throughout the remainder of this article.
At this point, let’s introduce two, related frameworks to help you start to conceptualize how this works on a concrete level, so you can start the process of developing your Chiropractic Marketing System.
Marketing Framework One: Location and Investment
Have a look at the diagram below.
As you can see, the diagram has four quadrants. Each quadrant represents a category of marketing channels characterized by where the activity takes place and the type of resource investment required to carry it out. Let’s unpack this further.
Quadrant One
This quadrant represents marketing channels that occur inside your practice and rely solely on you or your team’s energy and effort, with very little or no financial investment.
Examples of quadrant one marketing channels would be:
- Discussing referral opportunities with your patients.
- Gifting patients with tickets to your next advanced workshop so they can invite guests.
- Discussing and setting up talk opportunities at your patient’s company, group, or organization.
These activities are initiated inside your practice and are free or cost very little money. You’re activating word-of-mouth channels to introduce more people to Chiropractic—specifically a Spinal Checkup in your practice.
Quadrant Two
This quadrant represents marketing channels that occur outside of your practice and rely on you or team’s energy and effort. Again, there is very little expense involved in these marketing activities.
Examples in this quadrant would include:
- Giving health talks to interested groups in your community.
- Passing out flyers to passersby.
- Effective engagement on Facebook or Instagram.
- External partnerships with other businesses predicated on mutual exchange or ‘barter’ of some kind.
Quadrant Three
Quadrant three represents marketing channels that occur inside your practice and cost money. There is some level of investment involved in these internal marketing activities.
Examples in this quadrant would be:
- Organizing Patient Appreciation Day where you cater food and invest in various activities to make it fun and exciting.
- A gifting program for your patients.
- A formal referral rewards program.
Quadrant Four
Quadrant four represents marketing channels that are outside of your practice and require a financial investment. Many Chiropractors exclusively invest in this quadrant when they are trying to establish their marketing efforts.
Examples in this quadrant would be:
- Spinal Screening Events.
- Facebook Advertising.
- Google Ads.
- Paid Search Engine Optimization.
- Web Development.
- Other forms of paid advertising.
It is very important that you monitor your investments in quadrant four marketing channels very closely. For each of these individual channels make sure you know your return-on-investment so you can assess if an individual quadrant four channel is worth it. Much more on this later.
In general terms, I hope you’re seeing that there are many other marketing opportunities available to you than only spending a lot of money on external channels.
Marketing Framework Two: Promotional Periodization
The next Chiropractic marketing framework I want to introduce is known as Promotional Periodization. Promotional Periodization is a way of chronologically planning when your marketing channels/ events will occur. Think of this as a way of formulating your Chiropractic Marketing Calendar.
Have a look at the diagram below.
This diagram also depicts how your marketing effort should overlap and hopefully synergistically cascade to achieve great results.
Daily
There are channels that you will execute on a daily basis. Depending on your in-office schedule, you may think of this as being a shift-to-shift effort.
Things you do on a daily (or shift-to-shift) basis include asking for referrals, leading your patients to give testimonials about their great results (for you to use in your marketing communications), your website inquiry follow-up efforts, your baseline ongoing SEO investment, or possibly your daily social media posts.
Weekly
You also may have things that you do on a weekly basis. This would include things like promoting your weekly workshops, your special weekly social media posts, or specific events happening on a given week.
Monthly
For the monthly category, examples may include your monthly spinal screenings, external talks to an outside group/ organization, or maybe a special in-house monthly workshop designed around a specific complaint/ body signal that you are promoting externally. Possibly you have a specific Google ads or Facebook ad campaign that occurs over a designated month.
Quarterly and Yearly
Many successful practices hold quarterly Patient Appreciation Days and yearly holiday-themed parties/ events, often in conjunction with some type of donation drive. These types of special events can be great opportunities to build your practice culture around community, fellowship, and shared purpose.
Looking at the diagram again, it’s important to understand that the events and activities that occur less frequently (monthly, quarterly, and yearly) become higher-leveraged. The importance of these channels/ events become elevated. They are the special events that require even more enthusiasm, intensity, planning, and focus from your team.
Another advantage of Promotional Periodization is that it allows (almost forces) your Chiropractic Marketing System to be diversified. You don’t want to become too dependent on a specific channel for the majority of your Day Ones. You want to be able to plan and forecast by casting a wide net and reaching people in a variety of ways. This makes your Chiropractic Marketing System more durable and resistant to external disruptions.
Promotional Periodization creates a system of concentric circles of overlapping promotions. Remember, ABP: Always be promoting your practice. Marketing your practice is a service to your community and a major aspect of fulfilling your Purpose. Create a Chiropractic Marketing System to promote your practice and execute it daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. Your community will be better off for it.
Adjusting Excellence as a Chiropractic Marketing Channel
As we continue this discussion on Chiropractic marketing and promotions, let’s not lose sight of how important the quality of the care you provide is for the health of your practice in general, and most certainly for the promotional side of your operations. You need to be a great adjuster and committed to providing exceptional Chiropractic care. I hope this goes without saying and I assume you agree with me on this point.
Marketing and promotions should not function as a band-aid to cover up mediocre adjusting, poor clinical outcomes, or ill-defined practice systems. In a way, promotions should be the ‘cherry on top’ of your extraordinary practice and not the main driver.
Day One dependency can be a killer. You don’t want to be in a situation where, if your Day One inflow were to decrease by say 50-80%, your practice would be existentially threatened. How do you ensure that such a scenario would not significantly threaten your practice? First, you need to develop all Four Domains of your practice operations—especially your Retention Domain. Within the Retention Domain, the most important thing is that you are taking great care of your patients.
Satisfied patients alone should prime your Chiropractic Marketing Domain.
If you have been in practice for some time, you should already be generating a baseline level of internally referred Day Ones from your existing patient base. This should happen passively and with little effort from you and your team. This number should represent the ‘floor’ of your Chiropractic Marketing Domain.
It is definitely a good idea to engage your patients in referral conversations, but your skills with your hands, and the exceptional Chiropractic care you provide should already be generating regular internal referrals. Your patients should be automatically sharing their health breakthroughs with the people in their lives and recommending you.
Building a high-performing Chiropractic Marketing System is important. It will take your marketing results to new heights and expand your impact. But check on your current internally referred Day Ones. If your floor of Day Ones is currently zero (or close to this number), then you likely need to shore up other areas of your practice—most likely your adjusting and clinical skills.
Assessing Your Chiropractic Marketing System
The last major topic I want to touch on in this article is how to measure and assess the overall effectiveness of your Chiropractic Marketing System. Let’s look at best practices in analyzing the performance of your marketing outcomes.
The following discussion is derived from ADIO Chiropractic Coaching’s Performance Metric training module. This is a crucial training module that all clients go through in Phase One of their coaching journey. You can learn more about our Coaching Methodology here.
What Gets Measured, Gets Improved
First of all, you need to track the ‘source’ of all Day Ones that come into your practice. What channel did the Day One enter your practice through? Were they internally referred? If so, by who? Were they introduced via a promotional event like a talk or spinal screening? Did they click ‘schedule’ on your website? Were they introduced through Facebook? Etc. It is crucial that this element is tracked closely.
This data should be part of the patient intake process and likely accessible through your practice management CRM software.
At least on a weekly and monthly basis, you should know the exact total number of Day Ones your practice has seen. This metric should also be broken down based on the marketing channel they entered your practice through. This is very basic, and it should be easily delegated to a CA.
But let’s take it a step further. You also need to assess how valuable each marketing channel has been to your practice over a given period of time. Meaning, you should track how much revenue each marketing channel has generated for your practice over the last month, quarter, or two quarters, etc.
Hopefully, your practice management CRM software makes this very easy for you to calculate. Let’s zero in a step further with a hypothetical example to illustrate the level of statistical specificity I recommend you endeavor to have.
In this example, we will tease apart the individual elements of a specific channel so you can fully grasp the value of it to your practice.
Marketing Channel Example: A Health Talk at an Outside Company
You conducted a health talk on posture and ergonomics at a local company. Below is a summary of the key results.
- There were 50 attendees at the talk. Your staff physically counted this number prior to you starting the presentation.
- Out of the 50 attendees, 22 signed up for a discounted Spinal Checkup appointment that you offered as a special promotion in conjunction with the talk. This offer and the scheduling logistics were discussed and agreed upon with the company prior to confirming that the event will take place.
- The discounted rate for the Spinal Checkup appointment was $30.
- For each sign-up, you required that they pre-pay the $30 and schedule their Spinal Checkup appointment in order to receive the discount.
- The Talk Sign-Up Rate can be calculated in the following manner: 22/50 x 100 = 44%. (Not bad.)
- You collected $660 on the day of the talk.
That is not a bad result on the day of the talk. There is certainly potential to gain momentum in your practice as a result, but the work cannot stop there.
Now, it is important to track what happens with the 22 sign-ups over the subsequent weeks as they come into your office and go through your Conversion System.
For this hypothetical situation let’s say:
- 20 out of the 22 sign-ups came in for Day Ones. Day One Show Rate can be calculated: 20/22 x 100 = 91%
- Out of the 20 that showed for their Day One appointments, 18 wanted to proceed with their Report of Findings (ROFs) and they all showed for those ROF appointments.
- Day One to ROF show Rate can be calculated: 18/20 x 100 = 90%
- At the Report of Findings appointments, 10 out of the 18 ROFs started care. Conversion rate can be calculated: 10/18 x 100 = 55%
- Let’s say that each person who started care paid $1200 for their programs of care. That would be $12,000.
- So, the total revenue generated by this event (through the date of the sign-up’s ROFs) would be $12,660.
- This analysis does not include any future, post-ROF revenue that may be generated.
If you are not able to capture this level of specificity through your practice’s CRM software, then I recommend doing it the old-school way. Create a spreadsheet of all the sign-ups generated at a specific marketing event, in this case it was the talk, and track the results over time as those individuals progress through your Conversion process.
Market Your Practice Like a Professional
The whole point of engaging in this level of tracking and analysis is to generate data that you can use to guide your future decisions. It gives you actionable, black-and-white numbers you should use to compare and evaluate your various marketing channels with. You are not just tracking metrics for the fun of it. The goal is to use the data to help you to compare channels, make informed decisions, and allocate resources effectively in the future.
It is important to assess the return on your investment and to clearly determine where future marketing energy and investment should flow. Should you endeavor to repeat a specific marketing channel? Is a specific channel a home run that you should repeat as long as you can? Is there a complete loser of a marketing channel that needs to be scrapped?
You need good data to evaluate what has occurred and to inform your future decisions. It’s just smart business.
Final Thoughts
To wrap up this discussion, I want to further emphasize that this article is an introduction. My goal is to start you on the path of creating your own Chiropractic Marketing System that serves your Strategic Vision. Create a plan. Schedule and execute your marketing channels consistently. Measure and evaluate your outcomes. Refine, calibrate, and reload. Find the combination of marketing channels that fit your Core Identity. Watch your practice take off.
There are many more insights and tactics that we can drill-down on to more fully explore this topic. I will have much more to say on this topic in the future.
I’d love to hear from you!
If any thoughts, questions, or comments came up while reading this article, please don’t hesitate to send me an email and we can continue the conversation.
Keep up the momentum!
-DZ
